Mario Scaramella reportedly has been contaminated with polonium- 210, which killed Alexander Litvineko.

Mario Scaramella reportedly has been contaminated with polonium- 210, which killed Alexander Litvineko.

Photo: FRANCO CASTANO', AP

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Crucial questions yet unanswered on how spy died

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LONDON — It's a murder mystery filled with intrigue reminiscent of the Cold War — there's a retired Russian spy poisoned by a radioactive substance, a secret dossier, a slain investigative journalist and a shadowy fugitive billionaire.

But the story of the agonizing death of Alexander Litvinenko is an up-to-the-minute tale of politics, power and betrayal. And the final chapter of this spy thriller has not yet been written.

The most crucial questions remain unanswered: Was Litvinenko's death murder? Who killed him? Where did they get the poison?

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The tale began after Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer, met with Mario Scaramella, an Italian security expert, in a London sushi bar on Nov. 1. Scaramella gave Litvinenko a secret file purportedly showing that both men were on a hit list of Kremlin opponents.

Both men somehow ingested polonium-210, a substance normally produced in nuclear reactors.

Litvinenko fell ill and died, blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin. Scaramella was exposed to a smaller amount and showed no signs of illness, doctors said Saturday.

Investigators have found traces of radiation at least a dozen sites across London, including two British Airways jetliners. Litvinenko's wife was also contaminated with trace amounts of the poison, a friend said Friday, although she was not hospitalized.

Feared he was a target

Litvinenko told a reporter in June that a new Russian law would permit authorities to target its opponents abroad. He feared he was among them.

Another former Russian intelligence officer, Mikhail Trepashkin, wrote in a letter delivered Friday by human rights activists in Moscow that the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet KGB, had created a hit squad to kill Litvinenko and other Kremlin foes.

Trepashkin, who is serving a four-year prison sentence for divulging state secrets, said he warned Litvinenko of the threat in August 2002.

The Kremlin has dismissed the accusations as fantasy.

But the Guardian newspaper Friday reported that British intelligence sources suspect Litvinenko was the victim of a plot by "rogue elements" in Russia. Investigators suspect several Russian agents may have entered Britain with a crowd of Moscow soccer fans shortly before Litvinenko met Scaramella, the Guardian said.

"These latest developments only reinforce our thinking that it was the Russian government or some element of (Russia's) political landscape that was behind this," said Alex Goldfarb, Litvinenko's friend and spokesman.

Goldfarb and others suspect he was targeted because he was investigating the death of Anna Politkovskaya, a Kremlin critic shot to death in her apartment building in October.

This is not the first time the Kremlin has been accused of using drugs and poisons against critics.

Suspicion fell on Russian authorities in 2004 when Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin.

That same year, Ivan Rybkin, a former speaker of the Russian parliament, disappeared during his race against Putin for the Russian presidency. He later said he had been drugged.

In each case, Moscow has denied the accusations.

Acknowledged killing

The FSB, though, acknowledged that it killed
Omar Ibn al-Khattab
, a Saudi militant who fought with Chechen separatists, in 2002. Chechen rebels said he died after opening a poisoned letter slipped to him by the FSB.

Not everyone suspects the Kremlin in Litvinenko's death. Some of Putin's allies, in fact, say the poisoning may be the result of a falling out among the government's enemies.

According to this theory, the killer hoped to frame the Kremlin.

No one is naming any names. But Putin's supporters like to point out that Litvinenko's friend and sponsor was the fugitive Russian tycoon, Boris Berezovsky.

Berezovsky, a one-time Kremlin insider, is now a ferocious critic of the Russian president. Russia is seeking to extradite Berezovsky on fraud charges, but he was granted asylum in Britain in 2003.